Hail Mary? Hail Larry: Fitzgerald's heroics keep Cardinals alive in playoffs

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Arizona Cardinals linebacker Kevin Minter was sunk into his locker late Saturday night, contemplating a trip to the cold tub and looking across the locker room at wideout Larry Fitzgerald. He nodded toward the veteran, the way a student might pay homage to a mentor.

"That's Michael Jordan right there," Minter said. "You put it in Jordan's hands."

As he said this, Minter overheard a line of celebratory praise and his eyes went wide: "From Hail Mary to Hail Larry."

"Aw, yeah – that's cool," Minter said with a wide grin. "Who said that? That's front page, right there. Like I said, that's Jordan over there. You know what I'm saying? That man, he wanted this game."

Fitzgerald wasn't alone. A lot of men wanted Saturday night's game. And at various moments, it looked like any of them could have had it. But it was Arizona's long-tenured and deeply loved superstar who broke the back of the Green Bay Packers with two plays and 75 yards for an overtime touchdown. Using only one minute of the extra frame, he carried quarterback Carson Palmer to his first playoff win and erased what might have been second-guessed as a mistake of aggression on the final Cardinals possession by head coach Bruce Arians. Instead, Fitzgerald pulled the Cardinals out of a nosedive in 60 seconds and two plays, avoiding a playoff implosion that might have left a hole rivaling Meteor Crater.

Hail Larry, indeed.

But the triumphant overtime finish was only one in a string of jaw-dropping moments. Among them: a nullified 100-yard interception for a Cardinals touchdown; a Carson Palmer turnover at the Green Bay goal line in the fourth quarter; a potential game-sealing interception dropped by Packers cornerback Sam Shields; and an overtime coin-flip that didn't actually flip … but instead went straight up and down in flat momentum.

That latter oddity – the coin flip – only became necessary when Rodgers did the unthinkable: taking Green Bay from fourth-and-20 at its own 4-yard line with 55 seconds left, to scoring on a 41-yard Hail Mary to tie the game. Lest anyone forget, that's two completed Hail Marys for Rodgers this season, including one to beat the Detroit Lions in December.

Arians certainly didn't forget that one. With five seconds left and Green Bay setting up for the miracle attempt, he recalled the Lions not sending pressure against Rodgers – allowing the Packers quarterback to roll out and uncork the improbable. Cardinals defensive coordinator James Bettcher was lining up a similar defense, preparing to go to a prevent that would backload all of Arizona's best pass defenders in the end zone for an attempted knockdown.

As anyone knows, passivity is not high on Arians' list of attributes. And that changed how Arizona approached Rodgers on the final snap of regulation.

"Most teams play the prevent," Arians said. "That's what Betch was going to play. I said, 'Hell no. Blitz 'em.' [Rodgers] made a great throw. I thought that Calais [Campbell] was held, but it still ended up being a touchdown."

It ended up being a touchdown because Rodgers threw an unreal pass – moving laterally – and wideout Jeff Janis made an unreal end-zone catch (moving vertically). For a moment, it felt like the Cardinals might be rocked. The stadium went quiet, save for a large contingent of Green Bay fans, and cameras flashed a live shot of Arians with pursed lips, shaking his head in disbelief.

"We could have easily put our head down, especially on that damn Hail Mary," Minter said later. "They tried to Detroit us. We could have really been down in the dumps. [But] this team is resilient and we fought through it."

Palmer said his reaction after the play was to say to the offense, "Let's go. We'll get another shot." What he couldn't have known was that it would come on a double coin toss (the Cardinals won both) that would take almost as long as the one minute that ticked off the clock in overtime.

On the first play of overtime, Palmer came under pressure and spun out of a sack. Looking in front of him at a defense that was flowing almost entirely to his right, he caught Fitzgerald out of the corner of his eye, inexplicably wide open. This is the kind of thing that just doesn't happen in an overtime – the best pass-catcher on an NFL field suddenly standing alone with nobody within 10 yards of him. Fitzgerald would later say that he was surprised to turn and a see "a lot of grass." A 75-yard sprint later, he'd set up the game-winning touchdown. He'd handle that, too, on a 5-yard shovel pass from Palmer that the Cardinals had been hiding in their vest pocket all season.

And just like that, Hail Mary to Hail Larry had been completed. In its euphoric wake, it covered up a performance that Arizona would not likely survive if it were repeated in the NFC championship game against the Carolina Panthers or Seattle Seahawks. The reality is that Palmer struggled against Green Bay – to the point that he would have certainly been the goat in a loss. His numbers (349 passing yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions) were puffed up by Fitzgerald's overtime exploits, not to mention one Michael Floyd touchdown catch that went off a defender's forearm and serendipitously (and totally unintentionally) landed in his hands in the back of the end zone.

On at least two other occasions, defenders either dropped or missed interceptions that could have been brutal game-changers. Something like the interception Palmer threw at the Green Bay goal line, when he simply shorted an open receiver and threw it straight to a defender. Luckily for the Cardinals, this is also Palmer, who has been through more than enough turnover failure to know how to weather that storm.

"It's easy to dwell on things like that," he said later. "But the years I have and the experience I have, I've learned from a lot of different opportunities and situations."

Truth be told, the Cardinals never really did find a way to adjust to the pressure that Green Bay brought via a heavy blitz package all game long. They didn't establish the run, either. And the Arizona secondary … well, it certainly wasn't bad – until the final minute of regulation when it absolutely blew a coverage on fourth-and-20 and then surrendered the Hail Mary touchdown.

All of that will be sorted out in the film room, while the rest of the outside world celebrates Fitzgerald – the 2004 first-round draft pick who is on his third different regime and has been through the rise, fall and rise again of this franchise. Minter was right, Fitzgerald carried the Cardinals on Saturday night. He covered for them, too.

"He just put the whole game into his [own] hands," Minter said. "I was ready to go back out there [after the Hail Mary]. I guess he had different plans."

Now the Cardinals do, too. On Fitzgerald's shoulders, straight into the NFC title game.

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